I have two problems1:
- My iPhone doesn’t hold its charge very long
- I travel for work, and my iphone doesn’t stay charged for the entire flight if I use it to listen to music.
I’ll grant these aren’t unique problems, and there’s a whole host of solutions out there. I finally settled on the mintyboost, using the Makerbot Energy Pod case.
The mintyboost is a really nice project from Adafruit. It’s not too hard, but does require a bit of soldering skill, and it’s a really satisfying build.
Here’s my fully soldered up mintyboost:
Likewise, the energy pod is a pretty forgiving print. I botched several parts of it and was still able to assemble it with a minimal amount of filing down rough edges. This would be even easier if you use a filament that can be smoothed with acetone–I did not, so I was left with filing. Here’s the assembled pod with the mintyboost inside:
You don’t need to make the pod if you don’t want; the mintyboost is named because it’s designed to fit in a mint tin. The tin that it was designed for2 is no longer made, but the kit comes with a similar tin, so you can just use that. I just used the energy pod because I thought it looked cool.
I haven’t yet been able to take it on a trip; I’ll write another post about how well it works in practice.